She was pinned. She was hurt. I had to move, to go help her! I stirred but then forced myself down.
“Please,” she said. “Please, someone. Help me.”
I didn’t move.
“Oh Calamity. Is that my blood?” She struggled. “I can’t move my legs.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. How were they doing this? I didn’t know what to trust.
Firefight is doing it somehow, I told myself. She’s not real.
I opened my eyes. Nightwielder was emerging from the floor in front of the bathroom. He looked confused, as if he’d been inside looking for me. He shook his head and walked through the corridor, searching about him.
Was that really him, or was it an illusion? Was any of this real? The stadium shook with another blast, but the gunfire outside was dying down. I needed to do something, quickly, or Cody would stumble into Nightwielder.
Nightwielder stopped in the center of the hallway and crossed his arms. His normal calm had been shattered and he looked annoyed. Finally he spoke. “You’re in here somewhere, aren’t you?”
Dared I take the shot? What if he was the illusion? I could get myself killed by the real Nightwielder if I exposed myself. I turned carefully, examining the walls and floor. I saw nothing other than some darkness creeping from the shadows nearby, tendrils moving like hesitant animals seeking food. Testing the air.
If Firefight was really pretending to be Megan, then shooting her would stop the illusions. I’d be left only with the real Nightwielder, wherever he was. But there was a good chance that the fallen Megan was a full illusion. Sparks, the girders could be an illusion. Would a distant blast have really knocked those down?
What if that was Firefight, though, wearing Megan’s face so that if I touched her I’d feel something real? I raised my father’s gun and sighted on her bloodied face. I hesitated, heart pounding in my ears. Surely Nightwielder could hear that pounding. It was all that I could hear. What would I do to get to Steelheart? Shoot Megan?
She’s not real. She can’t be real.
But what if she is?
Heartbeats, like thunder.
My breath, held.
Sweat on my brow.
I made my decision and leaped from the foxhole, bringing up the rifle in my left hand—light shining forward—and the handgun in my right. I let loose with both.
On Nightwielder, not Megan.
He spun toward me as the light hit him, eyes wide, and the bullets ripped through him. He opened his mouth in horror and blood sprayed out his back. His solid back. He dropped, turning translucent again the moment he got out of the direct line of my flashlight. He hit the ground and began to sink into it.
He only sank halfway. He froze there, mouth open, chest bleeding. He solidified slowly—it was almost like the view from a camera coming into focus—half sunken in the steel floor.
I heard a click and turned. Megan stood there, a gun in her hand. A handgun, a P226 just like she preferred to carry. The other version of her, the one trapped by rubble, vanished in a heartbeat. So did the girders.
“I never did like him,” Megan said indifferently, glancing toward Nightwielder’s corpse. “You just did me a favor. Plausible deniability and all of that.”
I looked into her eyes. I knew those eyes. I did. I didn’t understand how it was happening, but it was her.
Never did like him …
“Calamity,” I whispered. “You’re Firefight, aren’t you? You always were.”
She said nothing, though her eyes flickered down toward my weapons—the rifle still held at my hip, the handgun in my other hand. Her eye twitched.
“Firefight wasn’t male,” I said. “He … she was a woman.” I felt my eyes go wide. “That day in the elevator shaft, when the guards almost caught us … they didn’t see anything in the shaft. You made an illusion.”
She was still staring at my guns.
“And then, when we were on the cycles,” I said. “You created an illusion of Abraham riding with us to distract the people following, to keep them from seeing the real him flee to safety. That’s what I saw behind us after he split off.”
Why was she looking at my guns?
“But the dowser,” I said. “It tested you, and it said you weren’t an Epic. No … wait. Illusions. You could just make it display anything you wanted. Steelheart must have known the Reckoners were coming to town. He sent you to infiltrate. You were the newest of the Reckoners, before me. You never wanted to attack Steelheart. You said you believed in his rule.”
She licked her lips, then whispered something. She didn’t seem to have been listening to anything I said. “Sparks,” she murmured. “I can’t believe that actually worked.…”
What?
“You checkmated him …,” she whispered. “That was amazing.…”
Checkmated him? Nightwielder? Was that what she talking about? She looked up at me, and I remembered. She was repeating one of our first conversations, following her shooting Fortuity. She’d held a rifle at her hip and a handgun out forward. Just like I had done to gun down Nightwielder. The sight seemed to have triggered something in her.
“David,” she said. “That’s your name. And I think you’re very aggravating.” She seemed to only just be recalling who I was. What had happened to her memory?
“Thank you?” I said.
A blast rocked the stadium and she looked over her shoulder. She still had the gun pointed at me.
“Whose side are you on, Megan?” I asked.
“My own,” she said immediately, but then she held her other hand to her head, seeming uncertain.
“Someone betrayed us to Steelheart,” I said. “Someone warned him we were going to hit Conflux, and someone told him we were hacking the city cameras. Today someone’s been listening in on us, reporting to him what we’ve been doing. It was you.”
She looked back at me, and didn’t deny it.
“But you also used your illusions to save Abraham,” I said. “And you killed Fortuity. I can buy that Steelheart wanted us to trust you, so he let you kill off one of his lesser Epics. Fortuity was out of favor anyway. But why would you betray us, then help Abraham escape?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I …”
“Are you going to shoot me?” I asked, looking down the barrel of her gun.
She hesitated. “Idiot. You really don’t know how to talk to women, do you, Knees?” She cocked her head as if surprised the words had come out.
She lowered the gun, then turned and ran off.
I’ve got to follow her, I thought, taking a step forward. Another explosion sounded outside.
No. I ripped my eyes away from her fleeing form. I’ve got to get outside and help.
I dashed past Nightwielder’s corpse—still half submerged in steel, frozen, blood seeping down his chest—and headed for the nearest exit out onto the playing field.
Or in this case, the battlefield.
39
“… find that idiot boy and shoot him for me, Cody!” Prof screamed into my ear as I unmuted my mobile.
“We’re pulling out, Jon,” Tia said, talking over him. “I’m on my way in the copter. Three minutes until I arrive. Abraham will blow the cover explosion.”
“Abraham can go to hell,” Prof spat. “I’m seeing this to the end.”
“You can’t fight a High Epic, Jon,” Tia said.
“I’ll do whatever I want! I’m—” His voice cut out.
“I’ve removed him from the feed,” Tia said to the rest of us. “This is bad. I’ve never heard him go this far. We need to pull him out somehow or we’ll lose him.”
“Lose him?” Cody asked, sounding confused. I could hear gunfire through the line near him, and could hear the same gunfire up ahead echoing in the wide corridor. I kept running.
“I’ll explain later,” Tia said in the type of voice that really meant “I’ll find a better way to dodge that question later.”
There, I thought, catching a bit of light up ahead. It was dark outside, but not as pitch-black as it was in the tunnellike confines of the stadium’s innards. The gunfire was louder.
“I’m pulling us out,” Tia continued. “Abraham, I need you to blow that explosion in the ground when I say. Cody … have you found David yet? Be warned, Nightwielder might be on your back.”
She thinks I’m dead, I thought, because I haven’t been answering. “I’m here,” I said.
“David,” Tia said, sounding relieved. “What is your status?”
“Nightwielder is down,” I said, reaching the tunnel out onto the field, one of the ones that the teams had used when running out to play. “The UV worked. I think Firefight is gone too. I … drove him off.”
“What? How?”
“Um … I’ll explain later.”
“Fair enough,” Tia said. “We have about two minutes until I extract. Get to Cody.”
I didn’t reply—I was taking in the field. Battlefield is right, I thought, stunned. The bodies of Enforcement soldiers lay scattered like discarded trash. Fires burned in several locations, sending smoke twisting up into the dark sky. Red flares blazed across the field, thrown by soldiers to get better light. Chunks had been blown out of the seating and the ground, and blackened scars marred the once-silver steel.